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How to Stop ObamaCare at the State Level - Live Blog Event

With the Supreme Court decision on ObamaCare looming and the continued unpopularity of the bill, our activists want to know what can be done at a state level to stop the implementation of this overreaching legislation.

We've put together a fantastic panel of health care policy experts and we'll be offering you the opportunity to ask them specific questions as to how we can stop Obamacare. This live blogging event is free and open to anyone who is interested in taking direct action to stop ObamaCare.

Or, you can also find this live blogging event on the front page of our website www.freedomworks.org. Please share this blogging event with anyone who is interested in regaining their individual liberty and ending this terrible legislation.

Gang, thank you for the informative hour. It was time well spent. As a true consumer advocate (broker) I'm living this nightmare everyday. My hope is that Groundhog Day ends with SCOTUS in June. Thanks again for sharing your information!

Jonathan Gruber's comments about ObamaCare, revealed last year thanks to the efforts of Rich Weinstein, were rare moments of honesty about the 2010 health insurance law. The White House and administration officials, of course, tried to distance themselves from the MIT economist. Yet, in June, it was revealed by the Wall Street Journal that Gruber "worked more closely than previously known with the White House and top federal officials to shape the law."

In case you have not already heard, health insurance companies operating on the ObamaCare exchanges in several states have requested big premium increases for health plans that will be available in the 2016 open enrollment period. Insurers have cited a higher utilization of healthcare as one of the reasons for the proposed increases, which must be approved by state regulators. In short, in many instances, they are paying out more in claims than they are receiving in premiums.

Professional licensure is a too-often ignored way for government to protect private monopolies, squash, competition, keep prices high, and reduce consumer choice. I’ve written extensively about the issue before, because the practice of licensure can be very harmful to honest citizens seeking to better themselves through gainful employment, and like all government regulations, it hits the poorest and least educated citizens hardest.

Enrollees in several states face a severe lack of options in physician networks for plans offered on the ObamaCare exchanges, according to a brief released on Monday by the Leonard David Institute of Health Economics and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Limited physician networks is a part of the health insurance industry's effort to mitigate mandates in the so-called Affordable Care Act that have increased costs.

Health insurance companies are seeking large premium increases for many health plans available on the ObamaCare exchanges. The proposed increases vary by state, but the average ranges from 23 percent in Illinois to 36 percent in Tennessee to 54 percent in Minnesota.

As ObamaCare continues to increase health care costs and wreak havoc upon the infrastructure of our health care system, physicians are at the front lines watching the damage first-hand. It is more important than ever that medical professionals who recognize the damage that government control is doing to their profession speak up and be among the loudest voices calling for reforms that re-center the practice of medicine where it belongs – at the relationship between individual doctors and patients.

When the so-called "public option" single-payer healthcare program was scrapped during the legislative "debate" over ObamaCare in 2009, lawmakers working on the bill created the Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan Program as a compromise. The non-profit co-op program is meant to compete with private, for-profit health insurance plans in the individual and small group markets. The 2010 healthcare law provided $3.4 billion in start-up funding to help get the program off the ground.

As one of our over 6.9 million FreedomWorks activists nationwide, I urge you to contact your senators and ask them to vote YES on Senator Mike Lee’s procedural move to pass a full repeal of ObamaCare with only a simple majority vote. Note that if the repeal amendment passes, FreedomWorks will no longer score against the vote on final passage for the highway funding bill.

Sometimes a man’s just got to take a stand. Rand Paul did it his 13-hour filibuster on drone strikes, Ted Cruz did it in his 21-hour floor speech to defund ObamaCare, and now Mike Lee is invoking an obscure Senate procedure rule to completely repeal everyone’s least favorite health care law.